1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of storage and distribution of parts, and in particular the adaptations permitting, in the best possible conditions, the storage and distribution of parts such as rivets for a tool such as a drilling/riveting head.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There exists, in the prior art, several means of storing, selecting and distributing rivets, such as those described in particular in the documents EP 0 855 236, EP 0 373 685, WO 95/34391 and WO 91/18695.
There exists in particular in the prior art as described in the European application no EP 0 511 093, storage and distribution devices for parts such as rivets which, receiving in different cartridges the rivets stored by type or category, satisfy the requirement and by means of a carrying fluid such as compressed air, the unitary distribution of the rivet required by the actuator such as a drilling/riveting head connected to the said device.
The applicants remarked that the storage devices described in the documents mentioned above often required directional kinematics of the part for each cartridge and therefore for each type of rivet, before its arrival in the distribution module, the immediate consequence of which is to increase the cost of such a device. Furthermore, the disadvantage of the said kinematics is that it is only suited to a single type of part, obliging the users to use the position of the corresponding cartridge only for a single type of rivet, which unavoidably causes a lack of flexibility of the distribution device.
The applicants also remarked that the succession of operations of unitary distribution, orientation and feed to the actuator caused additional time for each operation so that a particularly long distribution time for the parts was obtained.
There also exists in the prior art a global feed system composed of attachment elements of an attachment element adjustment tool described in the international application no WO 00/07751, whose main specific feature is to propose a buffer tank of attachment elements attached to the tool, the feed tube that is capable of filling the said buffer tank being removable to permit the movement of the tool with the said buffer tank. In this document, there are also described several functional sub-assemblies, for the storage and distribution of attachment elements. In this way, for example, one of the sub-assemblies illustrated is composed of a storage and distribution device for parts such as rivets, of the same type as that with a body equipped with zones to accommodate storage containers for parts such as rivets, all orientated in the same way, which may be moved by means of a transport fluid.
The said containers may be stacked and positioned in rows and columns, and a carriage comprising a mechanism for freeing the parts is associated to each column. This carriage moves a distribution tube thus moving the part(s), from the storage container to the distribution tube. This carriage may move in a displacement plane, which is to say in two axes. The containers may store different rivets by row or by column, each column and each associated distribution tube being capable of supplying a different rivet from the adjacent column or tube. In this way, the system described in this application proposes joining a sub-assembly for storing parts such as rivets in the form of containers with all of the parts contained being orientated in the same way, capable depending on the container of storing different rivets from one container to the next to a adjustment/user tool of the said parts by means of a distribution tube system of which a first end is attached to but can be removed from the said tool and of which the other end is associated for each tube to a different cartridge comprising a mechanism for freeing the said parts, the said cartridge cooperating with the said storage sub-assembly.
Another distributor described in the European application no EP 0 536 779 proposes, from the inlet end of the two tubes, aligning the inlet end of a single distribution tube that communicates with the applicator. Apart from the limited mobility of the inlet end with respect to the inlet ends (the movement is limited to a simple back and forth motion), this distributor only proposes a single distribution tube at the moving part level, as for the device described in the international application no WO 00/07751. Consequently, as part of an application of the distribution of parts that are too different, this single tube cannot alone feed the applicator effectively in good conditions.
The same is also true for the mobile selection means described in the international application no WO 95/34391, that is only associated to a single tube.